NOTES

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

1   The convention this book uses with German characters is to replace the character “ß” (Eszett) with a double “ss.” So for example, the German word for street, Straße is written as Strasse. This book uses umlauts for these German characters: ä, ö, and ü. When quoting documents that follow other conventions regarding German characters, this book leaves such characters as they were in the original.

PROLOGUE

1   George Orwell, “Review of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler,” New English Weekly, March 21, 1940.

2   There were actually two connected bunkers that I refer to as “Hitler’s bunker” or “the bunker.” The upper or forward bunker (Vorbunker) and the lower bunker (which was the Führerbunker proper).

3   Axmann’s Command Post (CP) at this point was at Wilhelmstrasse 64. Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 429, 433, and 435. Axmann’s headquarters were in this building’s cellar, which also served as an air-raid shelter. Unless otherwise noted, when using quotes from sources in German, translations have been obtained by the author. As a general rule, if the title of a source is in English, the quote from it was in English. If the title is in German, such as with Axmann’s memoir, the source material was in German and the author had it translated.

4   From Traudl Junge’s diary entry for April 26, 1945: “All around us death and ruins. On the Wilhelmsplatz is a dead horse, starving people carve it up, and pretty soon there is only the skeleton left.” Page 3 of translated version of Junge’s diary attached to Interrogation of Traudl Junge by Michael Musmanno, March 21, 1948, Munich.

5   See Artur Axmann, “Das Ende im Führerbunker,” Stern, May 2, 1965, 75. For a mention of the Soviets using phosphorous shells in Berlin, see e.g., Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (New York: Viking, 2002), 161. Note that white phosphorous can be used for illumination or to produce cover smoke, but it also creates toxic fumes.

6   Armin D. Lehmann and Tim Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker: A Boy Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer’s Last Days (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2004), 148–149.

7   Axmann’s CI Arrest Report lists him as having a height of 1.7 meters. Axmann CI Arrest Report, December 17, 1945.

8   Color reported in the CI Arrest Report for Axmann, December 17, 1945.

9   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 438.

10   Ibid.

11   This book uses HJ as the abbreviation for Hitler Youth based on the German name of the organization (Hitler Jugend).

12   This book uses the terms Soviet and Russian interchangeably for the troops serving the Soviet Union.

13   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Michael Musmanno, January 7, 1948, Nuremberg, 2.

14   Axmann nicknamed them “tank crackers.” Guido Knopp, Hitler’s Children (Gloucestershire, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 2004), 271.

15   Artur Axmann, Völkischer Beobachter, March 28, 1945, quoted in and translated by Brenda Ralph Lewis, Hitler Youth: The Hitlerjugend in War and Peace, 1933–1945 (Osceola, WI: MBI Publishing, 2000), 171. Note that I’ve changed the spelling of “honour” to the American spelling of “honor.”

16   Vienna HJ leader Ralf Roland Ringler. Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 220–221, Endnote 235 (on page 332), quoting from (and translating) Ralf Roland Ringler, Illusion einer Jugend: Lieder, Fahnen und das bittere Ende: Hitlerjugend in Österreich: Ein Erlebnisbericht (Sankt Pölten, Austria: Verl. Niederösterr. Pressehaus, 1977), 149.

17   There was talk by Hitler of miracle weapons, rescue by German military forces, and the Western Allies turning against the Soviets, but such non-reality-based ideas of rescue became increasingly absurd as the Battle of Berlin progressed.

18   Axmann made this offer to Hitler around 6 P.M. on April 28, 1945. Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 192. See also Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl, eds., The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogations of Otto Guensche and Heinze Linge, Hitler’s Closest Personal Aides, trans. Giles MacDonogh, (Philadelphia: PublicAffairs, 2006), 262. Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, also mentions this in his memoirs, along with the detail that a tank (panzer) would have accompanied them. Heinz Linge, With Hitler to the End: The Memoir of Hitler’s Valet (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2009), 197.

19   Eberle and Uhl, The Hitler Book, 262.

20   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Michael Musmanno, January 7, 1948, Nuremberg, 23.

21   “I personally was firmly convinced that [Hitler] would take his own life and I had the same impression of Goebbels.” Ibid., 18.

22   “Might of the Soviet, Impressive Parade on May Day,” A.A.P., The Age (Melbourne, Australia), May 2, 1945.

23   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 79–80.

24   Gerd was the short form of Gerhard. Weltzin’s name is listed as Gerhard in the SHAEF Basic Handbook on the Hitler Jugend (Annexe C), but Axmann in his memoir refers to him as “Gerd Weltzin.” See, e.g., Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 427. I have followed Axmann’s lead and referred to him as Gerd.

25   Artur Axmann, “Das Ende im Führerbunker,” 75. Note that this overall story about Axmann’s last meeting with Hitler is taken from two sources—this article written by Axmann and his later memoir. Each quote though is cited to its source.

26   Ibid.

27   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 443–444.

28   Ibid., 444. Axmann used his statement to Hitler (“This cannot be the end”; in German “Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein”) for the title of his memoirs.

29   Ibid.

30   Ibid.

31   Artur Axmann, “Das Ende im Führerbunker,” 75.

32   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 444.

33   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Michael Musmanno, January 7, 1948, Nuremberg, 19–21.

34   The HJ doctor was HJ-Hauptbannführer Professor Dr. Liebenow.

35   The source for this entire paragraph is the Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Robert Kempner, October 10, 1947, 7–8.

36   “The Wilhelmsplatz looks bleak, the [Hotel] Kaiserhof has collapsed like a house of cards; its ruins reach almost all the way to the Reich Chancellery.” Traudl Junge’s diary entry for April 22, 1945, Traudl Junge, Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary (London: Phoenix, 2005), 161.

37   Lehmann and Carroll, 154.

38   Artur Axmann, “Das Ende im Führerbunker,” 75.

39   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Michael Musmanno, January 7, 1948, Nuremberg, 26.

40   Ibid., 27.

41   James P. O’Donnell, The Bunker (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 224.

42   Ibid., 225.

43   For example, Hitler’s secretary (Traudl Junge) thought she heard a shot [Junge, Until the Final Hour, 187], but as an endnote in her own book explains, experts came to the conclusion that “at this point Frau Junge was far away, on the stairs from the lower to the upper part of the bunker. What she thinks she heard…was probably an illusion caused by the running diesel generator and the constant heavy firing on the Reich Chancellery.” Junge, Until the Final Hour, n111, on page 215. Also, Axmann recalled Goebbels saying “I believe I heard a shot” although Axmann himself “heard nothing.” Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Michael Musmanno, January 7, 1948, Nuremberg, 28. See also Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 445.

44   O’Donnell, The Bunker, 224. Axmann’s memoir has him in the map room waiting with others, not right outside the door, but as his memoir was written much later than this statement about being near the door, in so far as there is conflict between the two, this statement seems more reliable. In neither account does Axmann claim he heard a shot.

45   Ib Melchior and Frank Brandenburg, Quest: Searching for the Truth of Germany’s Nazi Past (New York: Presidio Press, 1994), 256.

46   See e.g., Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Michael Musmanno, January 7, 1948, Nuremberg, 29.

47   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Hugh Trevor-Roper, Military Intelligence Service Center (MISC), USFET, January 14, 1946, 2. It is possible that Hitler bit down on a cyanide capsule in addition to shooting himself. “Axmann stated that he also believe [sic] that Hitler took poison first and then shot himself.” Notes on the Interrogation of Artur Axmann written by Walter Rapp (director, Evidence Division, Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes), October 16, 1947, 5. But see “Hitler had shot himself through the right temple (whether he also took poison could not be determined).” Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Hugh Trevor-Roper, January 14, 1946, 2. Despite what is written in the notes of this interrogation, in The Last Days of Hitler, Trevor-Roper quotes Axmann saying that he believed Hitler “shot himself through the mouth, and that the concussion of such a blast resulted in the blood on the Fuehrer’s temples.” Axmann quoted in Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 46.

48   “AXMANN states that HITLER was sitting at one of the end of the sofa (the left end from the viewpoint of the observer), leaning slightly to the outside. Eva Braun’s body was to Hitler’s left, towards the middle of the sofa, leaning against Hitler’s body.” Leo Barton, Military Intelligence Service Center, USFET, “Supplement to interrogation of KEMPKA etc. on brief received from Major TREVOR-ROPER,” January 25, 1946, 2.

49   Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, 207.

50   “Axmann was not present during this wedding.” Notes on the interrogation of Artur Axmann written by Walter Rapp, October 16, 1947, 3. Axmann was present at the party/gathering to say congratulations afterward.

51   The number of guests is from Traudl Junge, Until the Final Hour, 183.

52   James E. Combs and Dan D. Nimmo, A Primer of Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 359.

53   Traudl Junge’s diary, April 22, 1945. Translated version of Junge’s diary attached to Michael Musmanno’s March 21, 1948, interrogation of Traudl Junge in Munich.

54   “One of these days I shall speak to him about this.” Ibid.

55   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Michael Musmanno, January 7, 1948, Nuremberg, 34.

56   “Axmann did not personally witness the burning as this was too horrible for him to witness but he knows as a matter of fact that it did take place.” Notes on the interrogation of Artur Axmann written by Walter Rapp, October 16, 1947, 5.

57   According to Eberle and Uhl, The Hitler Book, 272, instead of giving the pistol directly to Axmann, Günsche handed it to “Axmann’s adjutant, Lieutenant Hamann. He also gave him Hitler’s dog-whip. Hamann wanted to keep them safe as relics for the Hitler Youth.” It would appear that if Hamann had first received the gun, he gave it over to Axmann. Otto Hamann, though, was not Axmann’s adjutant, Weltzin was. Hamann had been the leader of the HJ Berlin region, and he died from wounds he received while trying to cross from Axmann’s CP on Wilhelmstrasse. Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 434. Axmann wrote that he received the gun from Günsche. Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 446.

58   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 446. Günsche and Axmann had been “on very close terms because [Günsche] once had been a Hitler Youth leader.” Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Michael Musmanno, January 7, 1948, Nuremberg, 38.

59   Junge said when interrogated that “I know from Günsche that [Hitler’s] ashes were collected into a box, which was given to the Reichsjugendführer Axmann, about the further fate of Axmann I do not know, I saw him for the last time on 2nd May, when I left the Reichschancellory.” CIC Special Agent Karl Sussman, Memorandum for the Commanding Officer, Garmisch Sub-Region, Subject: Interrogation of JUNGE, GERTRUD, August 30, 1946, (Secret), 6.

60   Axmann denied this, but Trevor-Roper wrote that “nevertheless, if I were to hazard a guess, I should guess that the ashes were given to Axmann.” Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (London: The Macmillan Co.,1952), page xxxiii. Also, on page 226 of this edition, Roper wrote, “Perhaps, as Guensche is said to have stated, [Hitler’s] ashes were collected in a box and conveyed out of the Chancellery. Or perhaps no elaborate explanation is necessary.” All other citations of this book are to the 1992 edition. See also O’Donnell, The Bunker, 302. (Axmann “was suspected of being a ‘keeper of the flame,’ perhaps even the custodian of Hitler’s ashes.”)

61   Artur Axmann, “Das Ende im Führerbunker,” 75.

62   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 509.

63   O’Donnell, The Bunker, 222.

CHAPTER ONE

1   Brenda Ralph Lewis, Hitler Youth: The Hitlerjugend in War and Peace, 1933–1945 (Osceola, WI: MBI Publishing, 2000), 39. (I added the umlaut to Führer.) The boys were joining the Jungvolk organization of the HJ, which was for boys ten to fourteen years old. The blood banner referred to here was “a Nazi ‘icon’ said to have been soaked in the blood of those who had died in the failed putsch of 1923. At the Nuremberg rallies, all new flags were touched to this grim relic.” Ibid.

2   Those HJ boys in the government sector at the end were part of Axmann’s breakout group.

3   Armin D. Lehmann and Tim Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker: A Boy Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer’s Last Days (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2004), 76.

4   See e.g., Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 23.

5   A similar ceremony had been held a month before, when Hitler (again accompanied by Axmann) had awarded twenty members of Hitler Youth (HJ) the Iron Cross.

6   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 418.

7   Ibid.

8   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 87. In quotes like this where there was no umlaut in the original, I have left it out in the quote.

9   Ibid.

10   See e.g., Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 418.

11   Oberscharführer Peter Hartmann, quoted in Ada Petrova and Peter Watson, The Death of Hitler (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 10.

12   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 88–89.

13   Joachim Fest, Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich (New York: Picador, 2005), 48.

14   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 89. Immediately prior to this quote, Lehmann talks about how Axmann tried to present what happened that day in a different light. “After the war I talked to Axmann at great length about those dark days. He claimed to me that he had presented us to Hitler to show just how weary and beaten we were, to convince him that the struggle was over and it would be futile to sacrifice our young lives. That was not the impression I had at the time.”

15   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 12.

16   Max Wiedemann, “Aufstieg und Fall des Artur Axmann,” Sozial Extra, October 15, 1985, Nr. 10.

17   Axmann joined the Nazi Party in September 1931. Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Robert Kempner, October 10, 1947, German version, 2. The age limit to join the party was later lowered.

18   Another translation of his position is “head of the social branch of the Reichsjugendfuehrung.” Ibid., 3.

19   Most groups were banned promptly, some Catholic groups lasted longer. See e.g., “Germany: Swastikas, Man & Boy,” Time, March 5, 1934.

20   Ibid.

21   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Robert Kempner, July 22, 1947, 1. See also, Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 233.

22   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 233.

23   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Robert Kempner, October 10, 1947, German version, 5.

24   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 234.

25   Ibid.

26   Ibid., 234–235.

27   The position of Reichsjugendführer was created by Hitler on June 17, 1933.

28   Baldur von Schirach testimony on May 23, 1946, International Military Tribunal, The Trial of German Major War Criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany, Part 13, (London: H. M. Stationery Off., 1947), 354. Von Schirach kept his title as “Reich Leader of Youth Education” and also received the title of “Inspector of Youth” (Ibid.). Although he had those titles and tried to take responsibility at his trial in Nuremberg for “Youth Leadership” to protect Axmann so “that no other Youth Leader will be summoned before a court for actions for which I have assumed responsibility,” in reality once Axmann took the post of Reichsjugendführer he was effectively in charge of the Hitler Youth and BDM. Von Schirach was busy with his new job as the district leader of Vienna.

29   “As Reich Youth Leader of the NSDAP and Youth Leader of the German Reich, the Führer has named the Obergebietsführer Arthur [sic] Axmann.” Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945, (English Volume III: 1939–1940) (Wauconda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 1997), 71, quoting translated material from Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro (German News Bureau) text, August 7, 1940.

30   Axmann put Helmut Moeckel in charge while he was gone.

31   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Michael Musmanno, January 7, 1948, Nuremberg, 1.

32   The information in this paragraph comes from Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Robert Kempner, October 10, 1947, 10, and Axmann, Das kann doch nicht.

33   Melita Maschmann, Account Rendered: a dossier on my former self, trans. Geoffrey Strachan (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1965), 147.

34   Stephen E. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander: The War Years of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 630. See e.g., Peter Antill, Berlin 1945: End of the Thousand Year Reich, Campaign 159 (Oxford, U.K.: Osprey Publishing, 2005), 30–31. This is a complicated topic; there is literally an entire book just about Eisenhower’s decision not to go to Berlin: Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).

35   Ambrose, The Supreme Commander, 630.

36   From a letter General Eisenhower sent to General George Marshall, August 31, 1944 (Top Secret). Text of this letter kindly provided to the author by Herbert L. Pankratz, archivist, Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum, Abilene, Kansas.

37   Antill, Berlin 1945, 18.

38   Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT), USFET, Intelligence Report No. EF/Min/3, October 1, 1945, “SPEER Ministry Report No. 19, Part III: ADOLF HITLER,” (Restricted), 46.

39   Goebbels “dictated a short ‘Appendix’ to Hitler’s Private Testament,” which included “For the first time in my life, I must categorically refuse to obey a command of the Führer.” Toby Thacker, Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 301.

40   James P. O’Donnell, The Bunker (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), 261–262.

41   Ibid., 270.

42   Richard Holmes, The World at War: The Landmark Oral History from the Previously Unpublished Archives (London: Ebury Press, 2008), 552.

43   CIC Special Agent Karl Sussman, Memorandum for the Commanding Officer, Garmisch Sub-Region, Subject: Interrogation of JUNGE, GERTRUD, August 30, 1946, (Secret), 6.

44   Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944-1946 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 380.

45   Jonathan Huener and Francis R. Nicosia, The Arts in Nazi Germany: Continuity, Conformity, Change (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 47.

46   Kater, Hitler Youth, 152.

47   Officially, Hitler gave Axmann the Gold Cross “in recognition of his unique service in directing the efforts of German youth in the Reich and now in the struggle for Berlin.” “Fuehrer Awards Cross of Gold to Axmann,” North German Home Service, 5 P.M., April 27, 1945, recorded and translated by BBC Monitoring, 5:38 P.M., April 27, 1945 (document in the National Archives of the U.K.).

48   The other holder of the Gold Cross of the German Order to survive past 1945 was Reichsarbeitsführer (Reich labor leader) Konstantin Hierl. Another recipient, Karl August Hanke, lived a month after Germany’s surrender; he died on June 8, 1945.

49   “Fuehrer Awards Cross of Gold to Axmann,” North German Home Service, 5 P.M., April 27, 1945, recorded and translated by BBC Monitoring, 5:38 P.M., April 27, 1945 (document in the National Archives of the U.K.).

50   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 445.

51   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 221.

52   Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Dept. of State, United States, and War Dept., United States, International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), 577.

53   Ibid.

54   Paul Lemberg, Be Unreasonable: The Unconventional Way to Extraordinary Business Results (New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2007), 40.

55   This number is according to Lehmann, who was part of this breakout group. Eberle and Matthias Uhl, eds., The Hitler Book: The Secret Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogations of Otto Guensche and Heinze Linge, Hitler’s Closest Personal Aides, trans. Giles MacDonogh, (Philadelphia: PublicAffairs, 2006), page 275, has the number at 200.

56   See Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 220.

57   Ibid.

58   As Trevor-Roper noted in his comments on the interrogation of Axmann: “Axmann appears reliable in regards to facts, but not dates…Almost all AXMANN’s dates are wrong. In the circumstances this is not unnatural and in fact very few of such witnesses have been accurate in these matters.” Major Trevor-Roper, CI War Room, “Special Interrogation of AXMANN AND KEMPKA,” Addressed to USFET, AC of S, G-2, CIC, February 11, 1946. I’ve checked times with other sources as Axmann appears to have become confused as to exact times regarding the final days in Hitler’s bunker and the breakout. Given all the confusion back then, and the long, strange hours kept by Hitler, it is not surprising that Axmann’s sense of time was thrown off. As for Axmann’s factual accuracy, additional evidence for it came decades after Trevor-Roper’s above analysis when the verification of Bormann’s remains proved Axmann’s account of Bormann’s death to be reliable.

59   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 223.

60   “Hitlers Höllenfahrt: Das Ende im Bunker und die lange Reise des Leichnams / Teil II,” Der Spiegel (Hamburg), April 10, 1995, 176.

61   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 449.

62   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 223.

63   O’Donnell, The Bunker, 304.

64   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 224.

65   O’Donnell, The Bunker, 304.

66   Testimony of Erich Kempka on the last days of Hitler, Berchtesgaden, June 20, 1945.

67   Cornelius Ryan, Last Battle: The Classic History of the Battle for Berlin (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 398.

68   Ibid.

69   In his memoirs, Axmann had various justifications for his use of HJ in fighting. His main arguments centered on their service being voluntary. As for the boys who fought to hold bridges in Berlin, his argument centers on this being an order from Hitler and his need to obey his leader. Colonel Hans-Oscar Wohlermann (chief of artillery for General Helmuth Weidling’s LVIth Panzer Corps headquarters) went on to say that “he had no doubt that Axmann had given the promised counterorder” with his thinking that it either “did not get through in time” or that the HJ ignored it. It appears though that Axmann did not give such a counterorder. Tony Le Tissier, Zhukov at the Oder: The Decisive Battle for Berlin (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Military History Series edition, 2009), 220.

70   Le Tissier, Zhukov at the Oder, 220.

71   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 120.

72   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 420.

73   See e.g., Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 80.

74   Second Execution Order to the Law of the Hitler Youth (Youth Service Regulation) of March 25, 1939, Article 9(3), “Induction into the Hitler Youth takes place on 20 April of every year.” Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Volume IV, Office of the United States Chief Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality (D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1946), Translation of Document No. 2115-PS.

75   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 80.

76   Max Wiedemann, “Aufstieg und Fall des Artur Axmann,” Sozial Extra, October 15, 1985, 37. Quoting from Panzerbär, the “Kampfblatt für die Verteidiger Berlins,” April 22, 1945.

77   Melita Maschmann, Account Rendered: a dossier on my former self, trans. Geoffrey Strachan (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1965), 157.

78   Artur Axmann, “Nazis Through and Through,” Völkischer Beobachter, September 3, 1944, quoted in and translated by Jost Hermand, A Hitler Youth in Poland: the Nazis’ program for evacuating children during World War II, trans. Margot Bettauer Dembo, (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 77–78.

79   Maschmann, Account Rendered, 158.

80   Ibid.

81   Guido Knopp, Hitler’s Children (Gloucestershire, U.K: Sutton Publishing, 2004), 273.

82   Ibid.

83   Ibid., 273–274.

84   Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (New York: Viking, 2002), 270.

85   Jean-Denis Lepage, Hitler Youth, 1922–45: An Illustrated History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2009), 153.

86   Chris Bishop, The Encyclopedia of Weapons of WWII: The Comprehensive Guide to Over 1,500 Weapons Systems, Including Tanks, Small Arms, Warplanes, Artillery, Ships, and Submarines (New York: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., 2002), 16.

87   Ibid.

88   Axmann recalled the explosion being at “a point about 300 meter [sic] north of Weidendammer Bruecke.” Leo Barton, Military Intelligence Service Center, USFET, “Interrogation of AXMANN on special brief by Major TREVOR-ROPER,” January 14, 1946, 3.

89   O’Donnell, The Bunker, 304.

90   Erich Kempka testimony on July 3, 1946, International Military Tribunal, The Trial of German Major War Criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany, Part 18 (London: H. M. Stationery Off., 1946), 73–74.

91   Ibid., 74.

92   Lehmann and Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker, 236.

93   Ibid., 305.

94   Ibid.

95   Hans Baur on Bormann: “His face was little known in those days. No one would have recognized him.” Ib Melchior and Frank Brandenburg, Quest: Searching for the Truth of Germany’s Nazi Past (New York: Presidio Press, 1994), 29.

96   Ibid., 28.

97   Ibid., 29.

98   Kurt Schilde, “Artur Axmann auf der Spur: Aktivitäten des letzten Reichsjugendführers nach 1945,” in Deutsche Jugend im Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Ingo Koch (Rostock, Germany: Verlag Jugend und Geschichte, 1991), 99.

99   O’Donnell, The Bunker, 310

100   Interrogation of Axmann by Hugh Trevor-Roper, January 14, 1946, 3.

101   Ibid.

102   Dr. Reidar F. Sognnaes, “Dental evidence in the postmortem identification of Adolf Hitler, Eva Braun, and Martin Bormann,” Legal Medicine Annual, 1976: 173–235.

103   Professor M. David Osselton (director, Centre for Forensic Sciences, the School of Conservation Sciences, Bournemouth University) email to author, July 4, 2011. Osselton noted that he consulted the following references: R. H. Dreisbach, Handbook of Poisoning (Lange Medical Publications); M. Ellenshorn, Ellenhorn’s Medical Toxicology: Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Poisoning (Elsevier Science).

104   Professor M. David Osselton, email to author, July 4, 2011.

105   Ibid.

106   Here is another account Axmann gave of his encounter with Bormann’s body: “I could see him clearly in the moonlight. There was not a mark on him and I assumed he had taken poison. I knew he carried a cyanide vial. I did not stay long enough to examine him.” Melchior and Brandenburg, Quest, 255. Note that Axmann told Trevor-Roper a different assumption for what had happened to Bormann: “The bodies showed no signs of life; AXMANN did not see any wounds and no signs of a shattering explosion. He assumed therefore that the two were hit by rifle fire in their backs.” Interrogation of Axmann by Hugh Trevor-Roper, January 14, 1946, 3.

107   O’Donnell, The Bunker, 306.

108   Albert Krumnow, a retired postman, in 1965 “said he and two other mailmen were ordered by Soviet troops on May 8, 1945, to bury two bodies which showed no signs of injuries. On one of them they found identity papers of…Dr. Stumpfegger.…The other body, he said, was of the same build as Bormann.” Reuters, “Police Dig at Berlin Wall Seeking Body of Bormann,” Montreal Gazette, July 22, 1965, 5. The police searched for these bodies in 1965, but Krumnow did not know their exact location and they were not found at that time.

109   “In 1972, during construction work near the Lehrter railway station, the skeletal remains of two males were found. By investigating the teeth and the bones and comparing the results with notes from the doctor and dentist of Bormann, experts from the police dental clinic of Berlin and the Institute of Legal and Social Medicine in Berlin concluded at the time that one of these was Bormann.” K. Anslinger et al., “Identification of the skeletal remains of Martin Bormann by mtDNA analysis,” International Journal of Legal Medicine 114 (2001): 194–196, 194. These bodies were only fifteen yards away from where police had dug in 1965 based on Krumnow’s information. Otto Doelling, “Painstaking Work Explodes Bormann Myth,” AP, Tri-City Herald, April 15, 1972, 8.

110   K. Anslinger et al., “Identification of the skeletal remains.” “An 83-year-old female cousin of Bormann provided a sample for comparison.” Ibid.

CHAPTER TWO

1   Gordon Gaskill, “G-Men in Khaki,” American Magazine, Vol. 139 (New York: Crowell-Collier Pub., January, 1945): 33.

2   Victor Greto, “At 87, Writer Still Flies High,” News Journal (Wilmington, DE), March 1, 2009.

3   Robert “Bob” Hunter (Jack Hunter’s younger brother), email to author, September 13, 2011.

4   History and Mission of the Counter Intelligence Corps in World War II (Fort Holabird, MD: CIC School, CIC Corps, U.S. Army, 1951), 11.

5   Ibid. for the change in policy after Germany was defeated. As for exceptions to this policy, one example is Jack Hunter’s friend during his military intelligence training, Werner Michel.

6   Tanya Perez-Brenna, “Jack D. Hunter is flying high; Love of airplanes turned novelist into artist, too,” Florida Times Union (Jacksonville, FL), November 7, 2003.

7   It appears that young Jack Hunter was not aware that an English translation of this book existed then, or he did not have access to a copy. It had been translated in 1918 as The Red Battle Flyer.

8   Jack Hunter, Spies, Inc. (New York: Dutton, 1969), 13. The main character, who tells this joke (“a decorated ex-Army counter-intelligence agent”) appears to be based on Hunter himself.

9   Perez-Brenna, “Jack D. Hunter is flying high.”

10   Bob Hunter, conversation with author, January 15, 2011.

11   Ibid. Bob Hunter was also color-blind. He joined the military as an electronics technician, but he was not able to do tech duty as he needed to see the color of lights, which indicated whether a ship was going away or coming toward one. When the military found out, they put him in electronics duty.

12   Ibid.

13   Greto, “At 87, Writer Still Flies High.”

14   Richard Prior, “‘Blue Max’ Author Relives War,” St. Augustine News, July 23, 2007.

15   Letter from the Adjunct General’s Office, War Department, subject “Temporary Appointment,” letter effective as of Jack Hunter’s graduation date of August 4, 1944.

16   Jack D. Hunter, “The Blue Max Revisited,” Over the Front, Vol. 13, no. 3, (Fall 1998).

17   Jack Hunter, unpublished material.

18   John Schwarzwalder, We Caught Spies (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), viii.

19   Thomas M. Johnson, The Golden Sphinx: The Army’s Counter-Intelligence, reprinted in Secrets & Spies: Behind the Scenes Stories of World War II (Pleasantville, NY: Reader’s Digest Association, 1964), 365.

20   History and Mission of the Counter Intelligence Corps, 11.

21   Werner Michel, correspondence with author, November 14, 2010.

22   Ibid., January 3, 2011.

23   Gaskill, “G-Men in Khaki,” 33.

24   AR 381-100 quoted in John Mendelsohn, The History of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC): Vol. 1 (New York: Garland, 1989), 114.

25   Ib Mechior, Case by Case: A U.S. Army Counterintelligence Agent in World War II (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993), 27.

26   Schwarzwalder, We Caught Spies, vii.

27   William Attwood, “The Germans Call It a Gestapo,” New York Herald Tribune, March 7, 1947.

28   Schwarzwalder, We Caught Spies, 262.

29   “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” U.S. Constitution amendment III.

30   Alan Dundes and Carl R. Pagter, Work Hard and You Shall Be Rewarded: Urban Folklore from the Paperwork Empire (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1978), 109.

31   Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) Evaluation and Dissemination Section, G-2 (Counter Intelligence Sub-Division), Compiled by MIRS (London Branch), The Hitler Jugend (The Hitler Youth Organisation), Basic Handbook, 1944, E.D.S./G/5, Foreword, 1.

32   Ibid.

CHAPTER THREE

1   Adolf Hitler, speech given at Elbing, Germany, November 1933, quoted in Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Dept. of State, United States, and War Dept, United States, International Military Tribunal, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Vol. 4 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), 313.

2   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 451. A slightly different location for the gun’s burial is given in a German magazine article which quotes an unnamed source: “Hitler’s gun [Axmann] had, he told a confidant, deposited under the ballast stones of a track near the Lehrter station—before he ran into a squad of Red Army soldiers.” Mathias Müller von Blumencron, “Trophäen des Sieges,” Der Spiegel, February 1, 1999.

3   Ib Melchior and Frank Brandenburg, Quest: Searching for the Truth of Germany’s Nazi Past (New York: Presidio Press, 1994), 256.

4   Interrogation of Axmann by Hugh Trevor-Roper, January 14, 1946, 4.

5   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 451.

6   Interrogation of Axmann by Hugh Trevor-Roper, January 14, 1946, 4. See also Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 452.

7   Artur Axmann, “Meine Flucht mit Bormann,” Stern, May 9, 1965, 58.

8   Ibid.

9   Peter Antill, Berlin 1945: End of the Thousand Year Reich, Campaign 159 (Oxford, U.K.: Osprey Publishing, 2005), 83.

10   Ibid.

11   Hendrik C. Verton, In the Fire of the Eastern Front: The Experiences of a Dutch Waffen-SS Volunteer, 1941–45 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2010), 66.

12   Ibid. Those with the SS tattoo often tried to remove it, see ibid., 212–213, where the author had his removed using ice and a razor blade. The trick at that point came for Allied authorities to look not only for the tattoo itself, but for a telltale scar of its removal.

13   Vasily Grossman, quoted in Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin 1945 (New York: Viking, 2002), 394.

14   Ibid., 395.

15   William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 1137.

16   See ibid.

17   Stars and Stripes, May 2, 1945, 1, extra edition.

18   Ibid.

19   Karl Dönitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (New York: World Pub. Co., 1959), 443–444.

20   For this section on the April activities in Bad Tölz, see the “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” the 307th CIC detachment at the Headquarters of the Seventh Army, Munich subsection, June 11, 1945.

21   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 426. Axmann just wrote the meeting place in Upper Bavaria, he didn’t write down the name of the actual town in Upper Bavaria—Bad Tölz.

22   The Nazi Party then was called the Deutsche Arbeiter Partei, the beer hall was Hofbräukeller, and the date was October 16, 1919.

23   Correspondence with Silvia Schurz, Tourist-Information, Bad Tölz, April 12, 2011.

24   “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” June 11, 1945, 1.

25   Ibid., 1–2.

26   John Schwarzwalder, We Caught Spies (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), 256.

27   Klaus Neumann, Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 51.

28   Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 94.

29   Hans-Adolf Prützmann’s title was the general inspector of special defense (Der Generalinspekteur für Spezialabwehr). Arno Rose, Werwolf: 1944–1945 (Stuttgart, Germany: Motorbuch-Verlag, 1980), 26.

30   Charles Whiting, Hitler’s Werewolves: The story of the Nazi resistance movement, 1944–1945 (New York: Stein and Day, 1972), 146.

31   “Werewolves to Fight for Reich,” Associated Press, London, April 2, 1945.

32   David Stafford, Endgame, 1945: The missing final chapter of World War II (New York: Little, Brown, 2007), 136.

33   Trevor-Roper, Last Days of Hitler, 94.

34   Schwarzwalder, We Caught Spies, 258.

35   Ibid., 256.

36   Trevor-Roper, Last Days of Hitler, 93.

37   “Termed a ‘Truce,’” Evening Post, Vol. CXXXIX, Issue 106, May 7, 1945, 5.

38   Charles Whiting, Hitler’s Werewolves, 192.

39   It was either April 25 or April 26. The CIC was not sure. “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” June 11, 1945, 2.

40   Ibid.

41   Progress Reports on Nursery Case, USFET, OSS Mission For Germany, X-2 Branch, July 28, 1945, Appendix 2.

42   USFET Release No. 1406, Security Release Time–0001 hours, March 31,1946. 1.

43   “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” June 11, 1945, 2.

44   Ibid., 4.

45   Christian Tessmann & Soehne GmbH, registered at the Amtagericht Berlin.

46   “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” June 11, 1945, 2. See also Progress Reports on Nursery Case, Appendix 2.

47   Jean-Denis Lepage, Hitler Youth, 1922–45: An Illustrated History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2009), 124.

48   Ibid., 125.

49   “Flint Kaserne,” Special Forces Association Rocky Mountain Chapter 4-24, accessed June 21, 2011, http://sfa4-24.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8&Itemid=11.

50   Ibid.

51   Diana Zinkler, “Wir waren doch noch Kinder,” Hamburger Abendblatt, May 7, 2005.

52   Ibid.

53   Ibid.

54   Ibid.

55   Ibid.

56   Ibid.

57   Ibid.

58   Clifford H Peek, ed., “The Last Ten Days of the War, XIV,” Five Years, Five Countries, Five Campaigns with the 141st Infantry Regiment (San Antonio, TX: 141st Infantry Regiment Association, 1945).

59   “Dachau was the first concentration camp which was established for a long period. It was opened on March 21, 1933. Other concentration camps were opened some days earlier. But all these were short time camps for several weeks. They were established in houses, prisons or working halls. But Dachau was the first one with barracks, watch towers, ditch and barbed wire.” Albert Knoll, Archive, the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, email to author, July 8, 2011.

60   Ibid.

61   Richard Marowitz, interviewed by Matthew Rozell at Hudson Falls High School on May 3, 2002, as part of a “small town high school history project,” transcribed by Sean Connolly and Nick Wildey. “April 29th, 1945. The Liberation of Dachau,” accessed November 9, 2010, www.teachinghistorymatters.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/april-29th-1945-the-liberation-of-dachau/.

62   “The Dachau death train consisted of nearly forty railcars containing the bodies of between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners who were evacuated from Buchenwald on April 7, 1945. The train arrived in Dachau on the afternoon of April 28.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Photo Archives, notes on Photograph #16988.

63   Richard Marowitz interview at Hudson Falls High School.

64   “World Battlefronts: Battle of Germany: The Man Who Can’t Surrender,” Time, February 12, 1945.

65   DeWitt MacKenzie (AP war analyst), “The War Today,” AP, Lawrence Journal-World, April 3, 1945, 4.

66   Omar N. Bradley and A. J. Liebling, A Soldier’s Story (New York: Modern Library, 1999), 536.

CHAPTER FOUR

1   George Orwell, Orwell: the Observer Years, (London: Atlantic Books, 2003), 41.

2   Artur Axmann, “Meine Flucht mit Bormann,” Stern, May 9, 1965.

3   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 452. The rest of the material in this chapter about Axmann’s escape from Berlin is largely based on the facts in his memoir and his articles in Stern magazine.

4   Ibid.

5   Ibid.

6   Axmann, “Meine Flucht mit Bormann.”

7   Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Robert Kempner, October 10, 1947, 8.

8   Twice in his book, Das kann doch nicht, Axmann mentions having been broke. On page 454, he wrote that after having escaped the bunker into the ruins of Berlin, he didn’t have a single penny. On page 461, he again mentioned being broke, when he left the village he’d been hiding out in, in Soviet-controlled territory in northern Germany. In an interrogation, he’d claimed to have had some money when he left Berlin, but that appears to have been a lie to cover up that he had later received money from Heidemann.

9   Armin D. Lehmann and Tim Carroll, In Hitler’s Bunker: A Boy Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer’s Last Days (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 2004), 223.

10   Ibid.

11   Ibid., 225.

12   Interrogation of Axmann by Hugh Trevor-Roper, January 14, 1946, 4.

13   Berlin is comprised of boroughs, which are in turn made up of localities.

14   A second unconditional surrender document was signed before midnight on May 8 in Berlin at the behest of the Soviets.

15   The Soviets waited until the Berlin signing ceremony. Besides, the time the first surrender document called for German forces to cease operations was 11 P.M. CET on May 8, which was May 9 in Moscow.

16   Alex Singleton, “Proclaim V-E Day Today,” AP, Lewiston Daily Sun (Lewiston, ME), Tuesday morning, May 8, 1945, 23. Byline London, May 7.

17   “Life Goes to Some V-E Day Celebrations,” Life, May 21, 1945, 119.

18   Kenneth Bourne, D. Cameron Watt, Paul Preston, and Anita Prazmowska, “British documents on foreign affairs: reports and papers from the Foreign Office confidential print: From 1940 through 1945. Series A: The Soviet Union and Finland, Part 3,” (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1997), 189.

19   President Harry S. Truman, “Broadcast to the American People Announcing the Surrender of Germany,” 9 P.M. May 8, 1945, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.

20   Zero hour is a phrase traditionally used in English to indicate the scheduled starting time of a military operation. For an analysis of the cultural meaning of this phrase, see Stephen Brockmann, German Literary Culture at the Zero Hour (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009). For the different meanings associated with this expression, see also James F. Harris, “A Critical View of ‘Stunde Null, in Comparative Perspective,’” Different Restorations: Reconstruction and “Wiederaufbau” in Germany and the United States, 1865, 1945, and 1989, edited by Norbert Finzsch and Jürgen Martschukat (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1996), 39–40.

21   I converted this from meters to feet: “400 million cubic metres of rubble,” which is “equivalent to a country the size of Great Britain completely covered in rubble to a height of several meters.” Deborah Ascher Barnstone, The Transparent State: Architecture and politics in postwar Germany (London: Routledge, 2005), 28.

22   “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” the 307th CIC detachment at the Headquarters of the Seventh Army, Munich subsection, July 5, 1945, 2.

23   Ibid.

24   Werner Michel, correspondence with author, January 3, 2010.

25   Kevin Conley Ruffner, “The Black Market in Postwar Berlin: Colonel Miller and an Army Scandal, Part 1,” Prologue, Vol. 34, no. 3 (fall 2002).

26   Military Government of Germany, “Fragebogen,” Form MG/PS/G/9a, Revised May 15, 1945.

27   Ibid.

28   One former CIC agent wrote that CIC agents “resent bitterly being called ‘G-Men in Khaki.’” John Schwarzwalder, We Caught Spies (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), viii.

29   Judge Advocate General’s Office, War Crimes Office, “Memorandum for Dossier File No. 100-587,” August 2, 1945. File No. 100-587 was for subject Artur Axmann, although his first name was misspelled as “Arthur.”

30   This comes from Ib Melchior, Case by Case: A U.S. Army Counterintelligence Agent in World War II (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993), 157–158.

31   Alexander Kozak and Duval A. Edwards, “38th CIC Joins in Liberating Bataan and Corregidor,” in Duval A. Edwards, ed., Jungle and Other Tales: True Stories of Historic Counterintelligence Operations (Tucson, AZ: Wheatmark, 2008), 96.

32   Werner Michel, email to author, January 4, 2011.

33   Ib Melchior, Case by Case, 30.

CHAPTER FIVE

1   Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950), 370.

2   The Times Military Correspondent, “Wehrmacht’s Hope of Survival,” The Times (London), May 17, 1945, 4.

3   Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Avon Books, 1971), 627.

4   Ibid.

5   Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 70.

6   Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 630.

7   See e.g., “Himmler Poison Suicide,” UPI, Lodi News-Sentinel (CA), May 25,1945, 1.

8   “The Representatives of the Supreme Commands of the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the French Republic.” From “Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany and the Assumption of Supreme Authority by Allied Powers,” June 5, 1945.

9   Ibid.

10   Robert McKenna, The Dictionary of Nautical Literacy (New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2003), 301.

11   Martin Kidston, From Poplar to Papua: Montana’s 163rd Infantry Regiment in the Pacific in World War II (Helena, MT: Farcountry Press, 2004), 16.

12   Ibid.

13   “The Queen Mary Carries 14,000 Troops Home,” The Times (London), June 21, 1945, 4.

14   Werner Michel, email to author, January 4, 2011.

15   Ibid.

16   Ibid.

17   Werner Michel, letter to author, November 14, 2010.

18   Werner Michel, email to author, January 4, 2011.

19   Werner Michel, letter to author, November 14, 2010.

20   Ibid.

21   Interessen Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie Aktiengesellschaft.

22   The IG Farben Trial was also known as U.S. v. Carl Krauch et al.

23   “IG Farben-Haus,” Institut für Stadtgeschichte Karmeliterkloster, Frankfurt am Main, accessed March 31, 2011, http://www.stadtgeschichte-ffm.de/service/geden ktafeln/ig_farben_haus.html.

24   Jack D. Hunter, communication with a confidential source, who provided it to the author.

25   Jack D. Hunter, unpublished material.

26   Ibid.

27   Bob Hunter, conversation with author, January 15, 2011.

28   Ibid.

29   Ibid.

30   Hunter, unpublished material.

31   Lansen is now Lansen-Schönau. It was combined with the municipality of Alt Schönau in 2005. “Namens- und Grenzänderungen vom 01.01. bis 31.12.2005,” Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland.

32   Timothy Reis, unpublished memo, June 10, 1979.

33   Ibid.

34   Ibid.

35   Hunter, unpublished material.

36   CIC Special Agent (ret) George Hochschild, interview with author, October 25, 2010.

37   Hunter, unpublished material.

38   Captain FC Grant, SCI, Seventh Army, “Operation NURSERY, 1st Report,” June 25, 1945, 1.

39   Andreas Pretzel, Gabriele Rossbach, Wegen der zu erwartenden hohen Strafe…(Berlin: Verlag Rosa Winkel, 2000), 36 and 42 n78.

40   While those of Jewish descent were forced to wear yellow triangles, concentration inmates deemed homosexual had to wear a pink triangle.

41   These facts about Kulas come from his later criminal trial. LG Karlsruhe on 12/20/1961, VI Ks 1 / 60 BGH of 05.28.1963, 1 StR 540/62.

42   With many minor variations, this is a cliché used by police and prosecutors when explaining why their informants themselves have extensive criminal records.

43   “The International Military Tribunal in its decision of October 1, 1946 declared that the Einsatzgruppen and the Security Police, to which the defendants belonged, were responsible for the murder of two million defenseless human beings, and the evidence presented in this case has in no way shaken this finding.” Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuernberg October 1946–April 1949, vol. 4, U.S. v. Otto Ohlendorf et. al. (Case 9: “Einsatzgruppen Case”) (D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1950), 411–589, 412.

44   Ibid., 412. This trial was presided over by Michael Musmanno whose interrogation of Artur Axmann is quoted elsewhere in this book.

45   Ibid., 414.

46   Ibid., 415.

47   Ibid., 448–449.

48   From the criminal trial of Kulas, which included other criminal defendants. LG Karlsruhe on 12/20/1961, VI Ks 1 / 60 BGH of 05.28.1963, 1 StR 54.

49   A. I. Goldberg, “Germans in Munich are Irked by Food, Prices, Treatment,” AP, Milwaukee Journal, June 2, 1945, 9.

50   Ibid.

51   Grant, “Operation NURSERY,” 1.

52   Ibid.

CHAPTER SIX

1   Shanghai (2010). Film written by Hossein Amini.

2   Timothy M. Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” 307th CIC Detachment, HQ 7th Army, APO 758, June 11, 1945.

3   John Schwarzwalder, We Caught Spies (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946), 260.

4   Reis, unpublished memo.

5   “Patton chose a code name for Third Army headquarters: Lucky. That portion of headquarters consisting of himself and his key officers was Lucky Forward, while the administrative section was Lucky Rear.” Alan Axelrod, Patton (Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 124-125.

6   Timothy Reis, unpublished memo, June 10, 1979.

7   Ibid.

8   General George Patton, June 5, 1944, from Charles M. Provence, The Unknown Patton (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1983), 36.

9   Ibid., 37.

10   Major W. H. Prentice, Cover Letter to CO, OSS/X-2, June 25, 1945, 2.

11   Reis, unpublished memo.

12   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 5, 1945, 1.

13   Werner Michel explained the term “Special Agent” in the CIC context as follows: “Concerning the term Special Agent, during my 11 years in CIC all operational individuals who had been rated as qualified, were designated as special agents and signed agent reports (AR’s) as s/a CIC.” Werner Michel, email to author, January 4, 2011.

14   They were not the first spies (or counterspies) to use journalism as a cover for their activities, and they would not be the last. This practice is one that occasionally causes serious problems for legitimate journalists because people then suspect them of being spies. As a recent example, in 2009, two French spies pretended to be journalists in Somalia and were subsequently kidnapped. The International News Safety Institute, an organization “dedicated to the safety of news media staff working in dangerous environments,” issued a press release condemning “any practice of government security agents posing as journalists.” As they explained, “this directly affects the safety of all journalists in Somalia—currently the most dangerous country in the world for the news media—and elsewhere. Journalists are already in great danger in many parts of the world and actions that fuel suspicion of their true identities and roles must be condemned.” “Government agents posing as journalists threaten safety of news media, INSI says,” INSI, July 16, 2009.

15   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 5, 1945, 4.

16   Reis, unpublished memo.

17   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” July 5, 1945, 4. Note, I corrected the spelling of “Tessmann” in this quote.

18   CIC reports listed him as a dispatcher (Fahrdienstleiter). Ibid., 6. His bio, though, in an attachment to this report, listed him as “chief of the repair shop” at Tessmann. Ibid., 8 (Appendix III). A later CIC report, on August 26, 1945, again lists him as a dispatcher.

19   Ibid., 6.

20   Ibid.

21   Ibid., 8 (Appendix III).

22   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 4, 1945.

23   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 10, 1945, 3.

24   Robert Hemblys-Scales of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR).

25   Hunter, unpublished material.

26   These numbers come from Jack Hunter’s receipt when he turned these items in on June 12, 1946, to the personnel officer.

27   Hunter, email to a confidential source, who provided it to the author.

28   This street name changed while Hunter was living on it. It was “vom-Rath-Straße” but changed slightly in February 1946 to become “Walter-vom-Rath-Straße.” Email to author from K. Rheinfurth, Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Stadt Frankfurt am Main, June 16, 2011. Today it is “Walter-vom-Rath-Straße.”

29   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 458.

30   See e.g., Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (New York: Basic Books, 2007). See also Peter Antill, Berlin 1945: End of the Thousand Year Reich, Campaign 159 (Oxford, U.K.: Osprey Publishing, 2005), 84, and Norman M. Naimark. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1995), 105–107.

31   Axmann said in an interrogation, in reply to “How many young people were under you as Reichsjugendfuehrer?”: “I figure there must have been 9 million people.” Interrogation of Artur Axmann by Robert Kempner, October 10, 1947, 1.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1   Peter G. Tsouras, The Book of Military Quotations (Zenith Imprint, 2005), 465. The quote was originally said on Armistice Day (November 1942), in the House of Commons.

2   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 5, 1945, 5. I’ve corrected the spelling of Zeppelin; this quote had it as “ZEPPERELIN,” although it was spelled correctly elsewhere in this document.

3   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 10, 1945, 1. I fixed a typographical error in this quote, it used to say “the cooperate” when it should have read “he cooperate.”

4   For example, one key document Pommerening copied listed all the drivers for the company and included when they were born.

5   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 10, 1945, 3.

6   Reis, unpublished memo.

7   Ibid.

8   Ibid.

9   Ibid.

10   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 10, 1945, 3.

11   Ibid., 4. Although this report has the wrong first name for “BOEHMER.”

12   Frau Dr. Rüdiger, “Sie haben sich während Ihrer Studienzeit 1931 der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung angeschlossen.” Irmhild Boßdorf interviewed Dr. Jutta Rüdiger in Junge Freiheit (Berlin), March 24, 2000.

13   Jutta Rüdiger, Ein Leben für die Jugend: Mädelführerin im Dritten Reich: das Wirken der Reichsreferentin des BDM (Preussisch Oldendorf, Germany: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1999), 131-132.

14   Ibid., 130.

15   Ibid., 132.

16   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 14, 1945, 1.

17   Ibid., 2.

18   Melita Maschmann, Account Rendered: A Dossier on my Former Self, trans. Geoffrey Strachan (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1965), 179.

19   The CIC has different spellings for Dinglinger within the same document; they also spell it as Dingler and Dingliner. Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 23, 1945, 1-2.

20   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 14, 1945, 3.

21   Ibid., 2.

22   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” July 23, 1945, 1–2.

23   Maschmann, Account Rendered, 177.

24   Ibid., 179.

25   Rüdiger, Ein Leben für die Jugend, 135-136.

26   From where the women had crossed, it was a bit more than four miles though.

27   Reis, unpublished memo.

28   Maschmann, Account Rendered, 179.

29   Ibid.

30   The source for this entire paragraph is Reis, unpublished memo.

31   Reis, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 14, 1945, Agents’ Notes, 5.

32   Ibid.

33   Ibid.

34   Ibid.

35   “SHAEF Setup Comes to End—All Yanks In European Theater Placed Under USFET,” Sun (Baltimore, MD), July 14, 1945, 3.

36   Bob Hunter, conversation with author, January 15, 2011.

37   Postcard from Jack Hunter to his wife at her Rocky River, Ohio, address. It has a U.S. postmark of July 25, 1945.

CHAPTER EIGHT

1   Hitler in a speech at the Reichsparteitag in 1935. United States Office of Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, United States Dept. of State, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: Vol. 3, United States War Dept., 1946, 320.

2   “Work Contract Between Kulas and Tessmann,” “Appendix I,” “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” July 23, 1945.

3   The source for this entire paragraph is Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” July 23, 1945, 3.

4   Ibid., 6.

5   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” August 1, 1945, 2.

6   Ibid., 1.

7   Hunter, unpublished material.

8   Jäger means “Hunter.” Jack is often short for John, while Hans can be short for the equivalents of John in German. Some people who knew him as Hans Jaeger called him Hansel as a nickname.

9   Hunter, unpublished material.

10   Ibid.

11   Hunter, email to confidential source, who provided it to the author.

12   Jack Hunter, The Expendable Spy (New York: Bantam Books, 1966), 128.

13   These leaders were, at first, Churchill, Truman, and Stalin. Churchill was replaced though by Clement Attlee as the election results announced on July 26 had Attlee as the new prime minister.

14   Peter Antill, Berlin 1945: End of the Thousand Year Reich, Campaign 159 (Oxford, U.K.: Osprey Publishing, 2005), 32. In 1945, the United States was the only country in the world with the atom bomb.

15   Richard W. Cutler, Counterspy: Memoirs of a Counterintelligence Officer in World War II and the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, Books 2004), 57.

16   Protocol of the Proceedings, Berlin (Potsdam) Conference, (the “Potsdam Agreement”), Aug. 2, 1945, 3 Bevans 1207, sections II.A.3, II.A.3.(ii), and II.A.3.(iii).

17   Ibid., section II.A.3.(vi).

18   Theo Sommer, “New Life Blossoms in the Ruins. Germany after the surrender: a tough start into a new epoch,” Atlantic Times (Germany), May 2005.

19   Of course, people in the United States celebrated the Victory over Japan and the end of World War II when it was announced in the United States on August 14 local time. But for the United States, the official V-J Day, as proclaimed by the President, took place on September 2. Japan first announced its surrender during the day of August 15 in Japan (which was still August 14 in the United States), but September 2 was the day of the official surrender ceremony.

20   Potsdam Agreement, section II.B.19.

21   Ibid., section III.

22   Yalta Agreement, February 11, 1945, 59 Stat. 1823, 5(2)(c).

23   Statement by the Governments of the United Kingdom, the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Provisional Government of the French Republic on Control Machinery in Germany, June 5, 1945.

24   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 458.

25   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 459.

26   Ibid., 461.

CHAPTER NINE

1   Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), 182. The word “Führerprinzip” was italicized in the original.

2   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” August 31, 1945, 3.

3   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 455.

4   Ibid., 426.

5   Ibid., 455.

6   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” August 31, 1945, 2.

7   Ibid., 4.

8   Ibid., 4–5.

9   Baldur von Schirach testimony on May 23, 1946, International Military Tribunal, The Trial of German Major War Criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany, Part 14, (London: H. M. Stationery Off., 1946), 333.

10   Ibid.

11   Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) Evaluation and Dissemination Section, G-2 (Counter Intelligence Sub-Division), Complied by MIRS (London Branch), The Hitler Jugend (The Hitler Youth Organisation), Basic Handbook, 1944, E.D.S./G/5, Annexe C.

12   Gerhard Rempel, Hitler’s Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press Books, 1991), 131.

13   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” August 31, 1945, Agents’ Notes, 4–5.

14   Ibid., 5.

15   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” August 26, 1945, 3.

16   Reis, unpublished memo. While this memo said Gams was in the camps for seven years, Heidemann used the figure of eight years on another occasion. Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 23, 1945, 3.

17   See Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 8, 1945.

18   This could happen either from inadvertence, or an inability to control his anger toward these unrepentant Nazis.

19   See Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 17, 1945, 3.

20   Hunter, unpublished material.

21   Ibid.

22   Ibid.

23   Axmann did not use the mayor’s name in his memoirs, he only referred to him by his title. However, Herrmann Bleckmann was the mayor of Lansen at that time. Iris Heisel of Amt Seenlandschaft Waren, email to author, August 10, 2011.

24   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 459.

25   Axmann wrote “first-floor,” but it was what most Europeans call the first floor and Americans call the second floor. As this is being written primarily for an American publisher, I’ve used the term “second-floor” in the text itself. See ibid., 460.

26   Ibid.

27   Ibid.

28   Ibid.

CHAPTER TEN

1   Don DeLillo, White Noise (New York: Penguin, 1986), 26.

2   For this section on Frankfurt, see Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 8, 1945.

3   The source for this entire paragraph is ibid., 2.

4   Ibid.

5   Ibid., 1.

6   Reis, unpublished memo. Also, the subject line on the continuation reports filed by Agent Reis changed to “The NURSERY Case.” Reis, Memorandum to the Officer in Charge, September 8, 1945, 1. The operation had previously been given this codename, but with this change in classification, so too came a change in the subject title. “In this report the Subject title (Suspicious Undercover Activities of HJ in Southern Germany) has been changed to read THE NURSERY CASE due to the change of classification of this case from SECRET to TOP SECRET. Future reports will carry the subject title as it now reads.” Ibid. As such, Memoranda to the Officer in Charge, by Reis, related to this case, prior to September 8, 1945, were “Secret”; from this date on they were “Top Secret.”

7   George Hochschild, interview with author, October 25, 2010.

8   Ibid.

9   Hunter was “the Officer in Charge of the case”: see e.g., USFET Release No. 1406, March 31, 1946.

10   Hunter, unpublished material.

11   One of Jack Hunter’s daughters told a newspaper that “her father named the sting after the birth of his twin daughters while he was in Germany.” Peter Guinta, “Jack Hunter 1921–2009,” St. Augustine Record, April 14, 2009.

12   Reis memo, unpublished.

13   International Military Tribunal, The Trial of German Major War Criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany, Part 13, (London: H. M. Stationery Off., 1947), Part 14, 335.

14   For a discussion of the use of the term “chutzpah” in American legal decisions, see Judge Alex Kozinski and Eugene Volokh, “Lawsuit, Shmawsuit,” Yale Law Journal 463 (1993), 103. Here is an excerpt: “The most famous definition of ‘chutzpah’ is, of course, itself law-themed: chutzpah is when a man kills both his parents and begs the court for mercy because he’s an orphan. But there’s another legal chutzpah story. A man goes to a lawyer and asks: ‘How much do you charge for legal advice?’ ‘A thousand dollars for three questions.’ ‘Wow! Isn’t that kind of expensive?’ ‘Yes, it is. What’s your third question?’”

15   This incident is documented in Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 8, 1945, 4–5.

16   Ibid., 4. Note that Hompeschstrasse was misspelled in the original; I corrected the spelling here after confirming that it had the same spelling in 1945. Gabriele Hopf of Landeshauptstadt München explained that “there has to be a typo in the American military documents. Since 1897, the year of the naming, the spelling of ‘Hompeschstraße’ has remained [the same]. The street is named [after] Johann Wilhelm Freiherr von Hompesch-Bollhei…and his brother Ferdinand Ludwig Joseph Anton Freiherr von Hompesch-Bollheim.” Gabriele Hopf, email to author, July 8, 2011.

17   Ibid. Again, I’ve corrected the spelling of the Hompeschstrasse.

18   Ibid.

19   Ibid., 4–5.

20   Ibid., 5.

21   Ibid., 6, Agents’ Notes.

22   Both sides had been clever enough to know that the old axiom about the best lies being close to the truth was a good one. Nordheim played a CIC agent who could not help them with the renting out of a building, while those he met with described their real need for a building to expand their business.

23   The CIC was not certain at first if this meeting was held on September 5 or 7, but Hermann Giesler confirmed it was on the 7th when he was interrogated by the CIC on September 20, 1945. Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 23, 1945, 2.

24   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 17, 1945, 6, Agents’ Notes.

25   Agent Reis wrote that “It is believed that Hauptbanfuhrer [Otto] Würschinger was also present.” Ibid., 4.

26   See “Kinderhort,” Der Spiegel, Issue 14, April 2, 1949. Note that the CIC report erroneously lists Hauptbannführer Heinrich Hartmann as the head of the entire Culture Bureau (Chef des Kultur Amt).

27   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” August 26, 1945, 2.

28   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 17, 1945, 6, Agents’ Notes.

29   Note that I corrected the misspelling of the second letter from an “M” to an “N” but I did not put an umlaut over the first A as the CIC reports do not use German letters. It should be “SAMMLUNG DIE Anständigen.”

30   Ibid.

31   Ibid.

32   Ibid., 7.

33   Ibid.

34   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 27, 1945, 2.

35   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 17, 1945, 4.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1   Stephen Ambrose, To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian (Waterville, ME: Thorndike Press, 2003), 149–150.

2   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 17, 1945, 4.

3   Reis, unpublished memo.

4   A famous example was Sophie Scholl, who was executed on February 22, 1943, at the tender age of twenty-one. As a girl, she had been in the BDM, but she eventually turned against the Nazi regime. She was executed for being part of a small group, calling itself the White Rose, that wrote, printed, and distributed anti-Nazi pamphlets.

5   Reis, unpublished memo.

6   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 23, 1945, 1.

7   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 27, 1945, 2.

8   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 23, 1945, 2.

9   Ibid., 3.

10   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 27, 1945, 2.

11   Ibid., 4.

12   USFET Release No. 1406, March 31, 1946.

13   Reis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” September 27, 1945, 4.

14   Ibid. Note that I corrected the misspelling of the second letter from an “M” to an “N” but I did not put an umlaut over the first “A” as the CIC reports do not use German letters. In German, it would be “SAMMLUNG DIE ANSTÄNDIGEN.”

15   Anecdote provided to author by a confidential source, 2011. Hunter also mentioned in some of his unpublished writings that his car was sabotaged.

16   Anecdote provided to author by a confidential source, 2010.

17   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 462. Axmann thought the Russians would likely send him to Lubyanka or Siberia.

18   Ibid., 259.

19   USFET, “Interrogation Notes on NURSERY Case No. 1,” January 2, 1946, (Top Secret) 1.

20   Ibid.

21   Axmann claimed this in both his memoir and during his interrogations by Allied authorities. As Axmann had just been in Bavaria, it is possible that he had secretly made contact with HJ figures there and arranged this meeting in Lübeck. Or he could have been telling the truth and had avoided contacting old comrades in order to minimize his chances of getting caught.

22   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 463.

23   A history of the American occupation of Germany stated that “eight million refugees were to come in from the East [to West Germany] between 1945 and the end of 1946.” Eugene Davidson, The Death and Life of Germany: An Account of the American Occupation (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 131.

CHAPTER TWELVE

1   Shanghai (2010). Film written by Hossein Amini.

2   Reis referred to Kulas as Max in an effort to continue to protect his identity. He used Helmut for Heidemann and Bringmann for Bergemann. I have changed these aliases to their respective real names in brackets in quotes from this memo (Reis, unpublished memo, 1979).

3   Reis, unpublished memo.

4   Ibid.

5   Ibid.

6   Ibid.

7   Ibid., cover page. This is from the cover page to the memo; this cover page is dated June l0, 1979. Reis used Kulas’s actual first name as the cover page uses real names while the memo proper uses codenames for certain individuals.

8   Reis, unpublished memo.

9   “The 17th Century,” Passion Play at Oberammergau, accessed August 5, 2011, http://www.passionplay-oberammergau.com/index.php?id=127.

10   George Hochschild, interview with author, October 25, 2010.

11   The “computational knowledge engine” WolframAlpha came up with 2.457 million U.S. dollars as the 2011 value of $200,000 from 1945. This used an average rate of inflation of 3.87 percent per year. There are a number of other ways to calculate what $200,000 from 1945 would be worth in 2011. This almost 2.5 million figure should be seen as just one of a number of possibilities, but it is useful as a way to illustrate that this was a large amount of money.

12   George Hochschild, interview with author, October 25, 2010.

13   Ibid.

14   Ibid.

15   While the famous Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann also was in the CIC during World War II, this was not him. The Rosenheim agent spelled his last name with a single “n,” while the famous scholar used two.

16   Reis, unpublished memo.

17   When interrogated, Memminger said that “EBELING was considered OVERBECK’s friend.” USFET, “Interrogation notes on NURSERY case No. 1,” January 2, 1946 (Top Secret), 4.

18   The indictment was issued on October 18, 1945. Final report to the Secretary of the Army on Nuernberg war crimes trials under Control Council Law, Issue 93, United States Government Printing Office, 1950, 143. It was served to the defendants the following day. Philippe Sands, From Nuremberg to the Hague: the Future of International Criminal Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 1.

19   Baldur von Schirach was found guilty on count IV and not guilty on count I.

20   Gerda Fromme, email to author, April 25, 2012.

21   Ibid.

22   Ibid.

23   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 466.

24   Irving J. Lewis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” March 8, 1946, CIC, Rosenheim, Bavaria (Top Secret), 1.

25   William L. Shirer, End of a Berlin Diary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), 140.

26   Leo Barton, Military Intelligence Service Center, USFET, “Interrogation notes on NURSERY case No 2,” January 20, 1946 (Top Secret), 8.

27   Melita Maschmann, Account Rendered: A Dossier on my Former Self, trans. Geoffrey Strachan (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1965), 148.

28   “Kinderhort,” Der Spiegel (Hamburg), issue 49, April 2, 1949.

29   Barton, “Interrogation notes on NURSERY case No 2,” 8.

30   Irving J. Lewis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” March 8, 1946, CIC, Rosenheim, Bavaria (Top Secret), 1.

31   Although people writing in English often use this term just to refer to the German Army, it compromised the army (Heer), navy (Kriegsmarine), and air force (Luftwaffe).

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1   Jack Hunter, The Terror Alliance (New York: Dorchester Publishing Company, 1980), 154.

2   Irving J. Lewis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” March 8, 1946, CIC, Rosenheim, Bavaria (Top Secret), 2.

3   Reis, unpublished memo.

4   Lewis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” March 8, 1946, 3.

5   Ibid.

6   Ibid.

7   Ibid. Note that the time was referred to as 2:15 P.M. elsewhere in the same memo (page 1). This though is just a five-minute difference.

8   Reis, unpublished memo.

9   Bob Hunter, emails to author, August 28–29, 2011.

10   Reis, unpublished memo.

11   Ibid.

12   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 467.

13   Ibid., 469.

14   Porter War, “Operation Youth: or The Story of Tim Reis and His Legion of Merit,” Lewiston Morning Tribune (Lewiston, Idaho), February 23, 1947, 1.

15   Lewis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” March 8, 1946, 3.

16   Reis, unpublished memo.

17   Lewis, “Memorandum to the Officer in Charge,” March 8, 1946, 4.

18   Ibid., 5.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1   George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1923), 102. This quote is commonly misattributed to Plato. See Andrew Fiala, Public War, Private Conscience: The Ethics of Political Violence (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), 31.

2   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 469. See also the notes from interrogations of Artur Axmann.

3   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 469, and Message from USFET to BAOR, “Subject is Operation Nursery,” December 21, 1945 (Top Secret).

4   Message from USFET to 3rd U.S. Army for G-2, “Reference Plan Nursery,” January 18, 1945, (Top Secret).

5   It later was officially named Camp King.

6   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 469.

7   Ibid., 469-470.

8   George Hochschild, email to author, August 17, 2011.

9   This does not include earlier prisoners, such as the head of BDM, nor does it include low-level arrestees. The list is in Message from USFET to EXFOR for GSI, “Subject is Nursery case,” January 9, 1946 (Top Secret). The names are: “AXMANN, MEMMINGER, OVERBECK, PAUL MUELLER, OTTI HABERMEHL, ERNST GABRIEL, EDMOND BERTSGH, HEIDEMANN, WALTER BERGEMANN, ERAN PRANTZ, OTTO THOMAS, ERIKA KISCHKAT, KURT SCHOELLKOPF, FRANK OTTO STRASSEL, PAULA FUEHRER, GEORG THEIL, HENTSCHKE, BOKU, UNZE, HELTMANN, SIMON WINTER.”

10   Leo Barton, Military Intelligence Service Center, USFET, “Interrogation notes on NURSERY case No 2,” January 20, 1946, (Top Secret), 3.

11   “German Raised Fresh Voice for Socialism,” Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1979, B22.

12   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, 472.

13   Ibid.

14   Baldur von Schirach testimony on May 24, 1946, International Military Tribunal, The Trial of German Major War Criminals: Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany, Part 14 (London: H. M. Stationery Off., 1946), 369.

15   USFET, “Interrogation notes on NURSERY case No. 1,” January 2, 1946 (Top Secret), 1.

16   Ibid., 3.

17   Ibid., 4.

18   Ibid.

19   Ibid., 5.

20   Ibid., 10.

21   Barton, “Interrogation notes on NURSERY case No 2,” 1. Note that he used the British spelling of the word “realised”; in American English it is “realized.”

22   Ibid., 2.

23   Ibid., 4.

24   Ibid.

25   Ibid.

26   Ibid., 5.

27   Ibid.

28   Ibid. Note that he used the British spelling of the word “organisation”; in American English it is “organization.”

29   Ibid.

30   Ibid.

31   Ibid., 9.

32   William T. Salzmann, email to author, September 21, 2011.

33   Message from USFET to BAOR, “Subject is Operation Nursery,” December 21, 1945 (Top Secret).

34   Reis, unpublished memo.

35   Bruce Haywood, Bremerhaven: A Memoir of Germany, 1945–1947, (Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2010), 154–155.

36   Bruce Haywood explained that the CIC then occupied a former police building and the briefing was on the second floor. Bruce Haywood, email to author, November 14, 2010.

37   Haywood, Bremerhaven, 155–156.

38   Bruce Haywood, email to author, November 14, 2010.

39   Haywood, Bremerhaven, 156.

40   Ibid.

41   Ibid., 157.

42   Ibid., 158.

43   Ibid.

44   Ibid., 159.

45   Bruce Haywood, email to author, November 14, 2010.

46   USFET Release No. 1406, March 31, 1946, 3.

47   See Richard Oregon, “Raids Stop Plots of Nazi Fanatics,” AP, Stars and Stripes, USFET (German Edition), Volume 1, Number 353, March 31, 1946, 1.

48   “Hitler Fanatics Battle Allies,” AP, Los Angeles Times, volume LXV, Sunday, March 31, 1946.

49   Ibid.

50   Ibid.

51   Original version (as kept by Jack Hunter) of USFET Release No. 1406, March 31, 1946, 3.

52   Hunter, unpublished material. Hunter went on to explain why and how he held on to the original version of the release.

EPILOGUE

1   Don DeLillo, White Noise (New York: Penguin, 1986), 287.

2   Bruce Haywood, Bremerhaven: A Memoir Of Germany, 1945–1947, (Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2010), 162.

3   Haywood later wrote, “I knew I had arrested the wrong Inge. It was the mother I should have taken in.” Ibid., 163.

4   Ibid.

5   USFET Release No. 1406, March 31, 1946, 3.

6   Artur Axmann, Das kann doch nicht das Ende sein: Hitlers letzter Reichsjugendführer erinnert sich (Schnellbach, Germany: Verlag Siegfried Bublies, 1995), 478.

7   Ibid.

8   Ibid., 475–476.

9   Schilde, “Artur Axmann auf der Spur,” 103.

10   April 29, 1949, Denazification Proceeding of Artur Axmann, Nuremberg, Germany.

11   Professor Toby Thacker, email to author, July 4, 2011. Professor Thacker is the author of the book The End of the Third Reich: Defeat, Denazification and Nuremberg (Stroud, U.K.: The History Press, 2009).

12   UPI, “Ex-Nazi Leader Fined,” The Times Recorder (Zanesville, Ohio), August 20, 1958, 1.

13   Professor Schaar Torsten, “Artur Axmann—Vom Hitlerjungen zum Reichsjugendführer der NSDAP—eine nationalsozialistische Karriere,” 1997, a revised version of his PhD dissertation (University of Rostock, 1994), Section 4, “Zur Nachkriegsentwicklung Artur Axmanns, quoting the 1958 denazification proceeding’s judgment regarding Artur Axmann.

14   Alfons Heck, The Burden of Hitler’s Legacy (Phoenix, AZ: American Traveler Press, 1988), 89. Alfons Heck had felt “elated” after hearing a speech that Axmann gave during the war; his feelings toward Axmann changed after the war.

15   Ib Melchior and Frank Brandenburg, Quest: Searching for the Truth of Germany’s Nazi Past (New York: Presidio Press, 1994), 256.

16   Axmann, Das kann doch nicht, dedication page.

17   Ibid, 483. Although this quote comes in the context of Axmann refusing to criticize Hitler while during questioning, it appears to apply to his mindset toward criticizing Hitler in his memoirs. Der Spiegel also interpreted it that way, writing that “the son refused, even recently in his memoirs to say ‘bad things about his father.’” “Am Rande: Hitlers Sohn,” Der Spiegel (Hamburg), November 11, 1996.

18   Dagmar Reese, Growing Up Female in Nazi Germany (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), trans. William Templer, 1 fn2.

19   Alan Cowell, “Artur Axmann, 83, a Top Nazi Who Headed the Hitler Youth,” New York Times, November 7, 1996.

20   Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt, Germany), October 27, 1996.

21   Ibid.

22   “Am Rande: Hitlers Sohn,” Der Spiegel (Hamburg), November 11, 1996.

23   Hunter, unpublished material.

24   Ibid.

25   Jack Hunter, email to a confidential source, who provided it to the author.

26   Ibid.

27   Although the name of the award (“Pour le Mérite”) was French, it was a German award. The award had its origins in Prussia, and it was fashionable among the Prussian elite at the time to use French.

28   Jack Hunter, “The Blue Max Revisited,” Over the Front 13, no. 3 (Fall 1998).

29   “The Nation’s Oldest City,” City of St. Augustine, accessed June 11, 2011, http://www.staugustinegovernment.com/visitors/nations-oldest-city.cfm.

30   Ibid.

31   The Immigration and Nationality Act as amended October 30, 1978 (later renumbered in 1990). See INA 212(a)(3)(E). Kulas was a member of the SS, which is considered a criminal organization in accordance with the IMT. This creates a rebuttable presumption that he should not be let into the United States. Given Kulas’s activities in Latvia, it seems highly unlikely that he would be able to overcome this presumption. See 9 FAM 40.35(A) “N1 Background and Summary of INA 212(A)(3)(E)(I),” (TL:VISA-77; 03-30-1993). U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual Volume 9—Visas.

32   Jack Hunter, “Treason’s Payoff,” from his blog, January 5, 2008. He refers to Kulas as “Karl” to protect Kulas’s identity even after all this time.

33   Ibid.

34   The decision in the West German criminal trial of Siegfried Kulas can be found at the following cite: Einzelausfertigung der Gerichtsentscheidungen des Verfahrens Lfd.Nr.526: LG Karlsruhe vom 20.12.1961, VI Ks 1/60; BGH vom 28.5.1963, 1 StR 540/62.

35   “Hans Garms,” Der Spiegel (Hamburg), November 18, 1948.

36   “Timothy M. Reis, 92, Cottonwood,” Lewiston Tribune, June 27, 2007.

37   Ibid. Note: The newspaper referred to it as “Gamble’s”; the correct name is “Gambles.”